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Hiroshima bomb may have carried hidden agenda

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Psychlone
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31 Jul 2005, 1:44 am

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7706

Quote:
New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman's main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

"Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan," says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.



Sean
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31 Jul 2005, 2:23 am

That article doesn't mention Air Force General Curiss Lemay, who approved of it's use. Anyway, giving Russia a show of force was probably more important than finishing Jaan off anyway. Think of the casualties that would have occured if Russia did invade allied countries after WWII. That would have been a whole lot higher than the estimated 500,000 allied casualties from the planned invasion of Japan.



jmatucd
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31 Jul 2005, 5:36 am

Quote:
Truman's main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.


Yes the reasons were two pronged:

1) force an early surrender from Japan and bypass an invasion that would cost hundreds of thousands of US troops and millions of civilians and Japanese troops lives.

2) stem the expansion of the Soviet Union and effectively threatening anyone who gets out of line or wages war with total destruction with no hope of survival

Basically, they two reasons were to prevent and end war.


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Absolute_Zero
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31 Jul 2005, 6:25 pm

There is no justification for dropping nuclear weapons on people. It is a sick crime against humanity and people pay for it for years, suffering from radiation that takes hundreds of years to fully decay.



SINsister
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31 Jul 2005, 7:02 pm

Absolute_Zero wrote:
There is no justification for dropping nuclear weapons on people. It is a sick crime against humanity and people pay for it for years, suffering from radiation that takes hundreds of years to fully decay.


There's no justification for war, either.


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